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What kind of experience does a donor (or potential supporter) get when they call into your organization? Is it an area of customer service that could use improvement? Today’s guest post is from Rachel Ramjattan. Have you ever been stuck in traffic bebopping along to a hit tune when life takes a strange turn? It happened to me this morning as my radio played Megan Trainor’s hit song, It’s All About That Bass.

Do you love kaleidoscopes? I hadn’t played with one in years until I received one as a gift for presenting a workshop at a fundraising conference. Instead of creating designs from shapes embedded in the kaleidoscope itself, this one made fascinating patterns out of whatever you were looking at. Successful fundraisers are a lot like kaleidoscopes. They have the ability to look at people and their own organizations and see limitless opportunities for making interesting designs together.

If you’ve been looking for signs about which way the fundraising winds blow for 2015, there is no lack of places to look. The Web has been awash with predictions for months. One source I like especially is the National Council of Nonprofits. If anyone is in a position to see the near future for fundraising, this organization is. Back in December of 2014, the Council posted What’s Up, What’s Down in Funding for Nonprofits. Here’s the gist:

There are so many choices when it comes to the vino; where do you begin? There are opinions on whether white wine is better than red, what pairs best with fish, beef, pork, or dessert, and if wine under $10 a bottle is even worthy of being considered “real wine”. If you ask 20 people which wine is the best white or red wine, you’ll get 50 different answers. Right about the time I was about to give up entirely, I received the best piece of advice. “The best glass of wine is the one you’re enjoying now.” That’s it – no games, no dilemma – the one you like is the best wine there is. What does that have to do with membership? Merely the best piece of advice I have for anyone struggling with creating the “best” membership retention, recruitment, and engagement plan. The best membership plan is the one you execute.

What do you put in a newsletter? Information about events? Information about members’ events? What value does that have for your audience? That is not meant to be a snarky question. I really want to know. Do they love getting reminders of your events every week? Maybe they do. But if that’s all you’re placing in your newsletter couldn’t that be accomplished in an email?

Yet another call came in to Mariner asking about alternatives to the basic chapter model. Like so many other associations, this one was struggling to keep their chapters active and engaged. Yes, some were working. But the bigger question to them was if this model was failing in some of their locales, might it eventually fail in all? And if so, what could we do today to change the future? They wanted to know what others were doing. We suggested that looking beyond the association world might generate more solutions.

When I learned that a manicure costs anywhere between $20-70, my initial reaction was, “this is outrageous!” Especially when I found out that a good bottle of nail polish usually costs less than $12 and those are good for 30-50 paintings per bottle. What a waste of money… Why would someone ever pay that much? I started wondering why people make seemingly irrational purchase decisions when the value equation just doesn’t add up. If you just bought a bottle of polish and watched some YouTube videos, you could be saving yourself $10 bucks a pop. Then it hit me. People don’t pay outrageous prices for the product itself, people pay for the meaning, experiences and stories they attach to those things. As Bernadette Jiwa says in her book Difference, “The fortune, not the cookie, is what people actually care about.” The story behind the stuff is what gives any finite and trivial thing meaning. The story behind the stuff is what gives any finite and trivial thing meaning.

Some of the biggest nonprofit campaigns of recent years were most notable for how well they mobilized the ever-elusive Gen Y demographic. The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge became a viral sensation, and the It Gets Better Project's successful YouTube videos helped bring light to important issues affecting the LGBT community. But while these efforts certainly have helped to illuminate the future of fundraising, they haven’t been as successful in engaging older people, who consistently give the largest donations year after year. For those hoping to use technology to connect with their older donors, here are five important points to keep in mind as you create your digital plan of attack.

There are two universal truths about non-dues revenue: associations love it, and can always use more. According to the Naylor sales team, however, there are several more non-dues revenue truths associations should know to maximize their non-dues revenue earning potential. A survey of our sales team and publishers revealed these additional truisms:

If there’s one thing that frustrates Facebook Page managers, it’s when the content they publish fails to reach a significant number of fans supporters. Well, we have good news. It’s called “engaging content”! Okay, so this might not sound like content marketing hacks for Facebook. But hold on, I’m not just talking about super compelling images, stories or videos. I am talking about a specific type of content: that when you post it, your fans can’t stop themselves from sharing it with their friends. The truth of the matter is, in order for content to be successful on Facebook, your fans and their friends must want to be seen consuming and sharing it.

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